Contrary to Popular Belief
by Fencing Supplies
Summary: Three ordinary people, three extraordinary jail stays. Attempts at realistic "fallen into One Piece" stories.
1. Entering Limbo

_This stories cover image was sourced from Tumblr and credited to Mark Henson. Thanks to a very special grammer nut, KonekoNoRenkinjutsushi, for taking the time to beta this._

_There is a song that summaries the whole story, which is Insane by Flume ft. Moon Holiday. It's worth it to listen while reading._

"Mr Brassing, can you turn to Mr Emerson and actually tell him that you're sorry? Or are you too cold-blooded for that, too proud, too _not_ sorry."

The jury mumbled (he enjoyed torturing Mr Emerson?)

"My client has already admitted that he is guilty."

"And you're client admitted proudly, didn't he?"

The client, a sweet looking child, shot his head up and cut into the conversation. His lawyer gritted his teeth hard. The boy could never hold his tongue.

"Jamie had it coming, you're such a fucking bastard, shoving everyone and thinking you can get away with it."

No, this boy was defiantly not sweet.

"Mr Brassing, please reframe from swearing."

"You thought you were such hot shit, hadn't you?"

The jury muttered (he is rather quick to aggression, isn't he?)

"My client will not be answering such out of context questions."

"Not game? Scared? Need this suit to hold your hand now, Jamie? Reality caught up to you, huh, Jamie?"

"Mr Brassing, please."

The boy's lawyer leaned close, and whispered something as the veins throbbed across his forehead.

"Shut up."

The boy just glared across the room. The receiver, a greasy yet devilish looking teenager of the same age noticed, and mockingly blew him a kiss.

"Take your mind off Jamie; you're killing your chances with every word you _spit_."

The session ended much later, after much more debate over nothing, really. Ailuro waited in his chair as people filed out and flooded the doors. Observers hustled and wigged officials ambled off to their next job. He shifted about trying to shake the heavy suit his lawyer had loaned him (he didn't have one of his own).

"Would it kill you to pretend at least?" His double chin, pink skinned, hairy faced lawyer breathed into his ear. Ailuro wasn't even sure why the man was working for him, probably assigned by the government or something high up.

"Why should I?"

He was Ailuro Brassing. Everyone called him Panda through, it started because when he was young (young, young) he was pudgy and round, and always had at least one black eye. Panda, panda bear, not in years has he been Ailuro, let alone Mr Brassing. It was to the point where he didn't respond when people call out to him, couldn't recognise the name as his own.

Panda or panda bear.

"Ailuro," it grated him bad, that name, "you're only fifteen for gods sakes, let the water works rip, mention your parents, talk about being bullied into it, how you can't sleep at night."

"I'm not putting on a performance, Bill, and you fucking well know that."

"But they increase your penalty when you don't show remorse."

Panda just scoffed and walked away, down the grand wooden corridor.

Needless to say, his case ended in two years. But he didn't care. It had felt so good when his fist had grinded into the smirking face. That's all it had been. Torture, you say? The torture claim was just the other side milking the situation for all it had. A king hit, a flying through a window, a minced into the dirt. The piece of crap got what was coming to him.

Because he has no family, so all his love pours over his friends; his entire year level, in fact. And when you manipulate and toy and brutalise…

Expect to be put six feet under.

Later when he was wound in prison clothes and cuffed to a steel bar, he couldn't help but feel his heart lunged when he realised… he wasn't there now, he wasn't anywhere. And there was Jamie, walking free, patrolling around the school yard.

And here was his friend, visiting him in jail.

"He's taken it as if he needs to prove himself. It's so shitty. It's nothing we can't deal with though, but it's the younger grades that you've got to worry about, you know?"

When he was being walked back, something snapped and something dropped.

And something went "you're going to die now"

And something went "make me"

And then he went flat and stretched longer than the world. Nothing wanted to work, eyes, ears, mind, tongue. Waves were brutally smacking into him and wind hurling sand against him. He stayed like that, not wanting to move…not even thinking that movement was possible any more.

He was half sunken into the grimy sand, covered in seaweed and ocean gunk from the tide which had sunken far away downs the shore. His eyes were regaining, and they were telling him only trouble.

At first he had though he was under water, looking up at rolling and screaming waves crashing about, because the clouds, that's what they looked like. Sometimes when he was down on the beach, a wave would dunk him under and tear him about a bit. He would open his eyes and get to see the underside of the wave, in its glory.

The sour smelling foam pressed by against his face, sliding around his lips and nose. He needed to get up. Panda had- does live along a beach, he understands the signs and what was about to happen. He knows, and he struggles to his knees and moves. He crawls forward, to high ground, to shelter, to something. As he moves, the ocean's things start to peel off and fall from him.

By the time he is up off the sand, and into the grass, he knows that he needs to stand, and he needs to run.

But that's so difficult, so very impossible right now. So after falling like a doll enough times that purple bruises have started to crawl up his arms and chest and across his tender and unresponsive skin. He's worried, because he shouldn't be bruising so easily and also he needs to get up, uphill, up mountain, up staircase, up something.

But the land is flat, and there is nothing but patchy, tangled grass and bald, stunted trees. Wait, there's something else now, something like a row of cubby houses far in the distance. He remembers now, he used to be able to see in colour and beyond his hands. His eyesight hadn't been as fixed as he'd thought. His mind seems to reviving itself next. Now he isn't experiencing primitive, urgent instinct. He isn't just listening to a voice screaming for high ground for a reason neither can recollect.

Why was he searching for high ground anyway? He can't remember now, all he wanted to do was just curl up and sleep. Pain was seeping in, and it was spreading through his veins and pooling in his stomach and tearing into him life a bloody starved wolf.

Maybe he won't admit that he cried, loud; maybe he doesn't remember, like you don't remember your birth; maybe it never happened, maybe it undoubtedly did.

He was happy when the rain screeched in, soothing his burning skin. He was happy when water seemed to scoop him in its arms and cradle him, taking him somewhere, in or out or across, this somewhere is big and blue, vast and figureless This water was steamy and also cold, fast with current, slows with dead spots and slopped sometimes as if the world had been tipped while he hadn't been looking. He wasn't looking, so it could he possible; he was just letting himself be taken. This somewhere drowned him, sunk its teeth into him and tore his apart between waves.

Yet, eventually, it ended with him being slumped and rested against the shore. The very same, no, this doesn't feel familiar. This one was different, this one was pebbly like millions of tiny turtle shells and covered in scores of birds all waiting patiently for helpless nibbles to be washed just like he had been onto the shore.

Panda died, there on the ugly shore, amongst the feral birds and polluted waters. Covered in factory slick and ocean treasures.

Then he woke up again, and he wondered, how many times had he died since he had arrived?

Sixty two… not that he knows.


	2. Entering Halfway House

He watched big ships sail across the ocean, far on the horizon until night fell. Even then, in the dark, he still watched specks of light float calmly like ghosts, far, far away. Panda wondered where they had come from, where they were going; who they were… where this was.

They were great majestic sail boats, thick beamed and sturdy hulled. He had only ever seen the paper thin, athletic yachts that bobbed down in the local harbour. Never these great gallons, with what looked like cannons peering out from their ribs.

He could see the shades of black around him, and watched things move and dance, but really could tell of nothing more. They were just grains shifting over each other and mixing about. Panda turned his face up to the stars, clear, crisp, countless stars. He gazed at the moon, slim like a snakes smile, not offering him a drop of night time light to see by. He felt like he was galaxies away from his home, from his country even. While the beach was a familiar comfort, something that had been in-between his toes and rushing up to him for all his life and memory, the cold wind, the daunting amount of stars, the unfamiliar calls and cries of the wildlife; these were not anything he had ever experienced before.

His most important sense was his hearing, and he made sure to hear everything. The crash of waves, howls of animals, screams of prey and crunches of footsteps. He would reach around and curl his fist about some stone or wood, throwing it when those footsteps or growls came too close; which was often rewarded with a scream of surprise and unsure scuttles. He did not sleep a breath that night.

Just as it seemed that the animals had decided to leave him alone, the Sun started to stretch up into the sky, draining everything into a cold purple and chasing the weaker stars away. With the Sun giving him light to see by, even as weak and sleepy as this, he started see again. Panda stood and inspect the footprints of the night animals. There were teams of hoof and claw foot prints thrown about the sand, and it ran him a bad morning chill when he saw how many and how close they had actually been, every inch of sand had been packed down and something had been crawling within arm's reach of him.

He spent another lifetime along the beach, nights and days, horrible and deadly, every second and every turn; your life. He travelled West, always west, following the beach. He was hoping that a town or house will pop up out of the sand or the boats he had glimpsed on the first night sail back past him. He wondered, sometimes, as he crouch tense and bleeding, how long his maths teacher, or the top of his class would have lasted.

He was low, low, bottom of the barrel at school, better things to do he tells everyone, better things I can become. He gritted his teeth, not for the first time, at why it was only the unpractical book smart kids that got praised, why schools label students who had talents in other ways bad and useless. It offered him an anchor of sanity, thinking about school and friends, air conditioned class rooms and clean clothes.

He continued to dig into the sand, pausing and squeezing his eyes shut when a wave of pain struck. He had no idea why his body seemed to try and kill itself sometimes, unwilling suicide he thought darkly. Muscles that were strong from school sports pumped as they tried to bend to the demands even though they were weak with hunger and thirst.

Panda glanced about, he was convinced that he had slipped into madness, but he wasn't about to ignore the warnings his body was picking up on. He glanced up the beach, stopping in his dig for some buried, hibernating, ocean mice which he had watched other animals dig for and eat.

He was sure he was mad, but why, when he ate these scaly, gilled, mice did he fill up? Why, when he had approach the salt water drinking, sounded like lions, teeth like sharks, goats, the ones he had glanced up to see right now, why when he had approached them, (chanting, all in my mind, all in my mind), why when he had been attached, why had he bled? If it was all madness, then why was it real?

Panda absently lifted a sandy hand to touch his still fresh and bloody, wound along the back of his shoulder and arm. He watched carefully as the goat's young skipped about in the gentle waves and elderly bathed in the brief, warm sun. He quietly slipped into the trees, knowing that the goats didn't like to stray off the sand and onto the grass and leaf litter that carpeted around the trees.

He was feeling faint and a pounding headache had started to spread not only through his skull, but down his spine. He panicked, noticing other aches and pains, which, honestly, had been gathering in his body since the water carried him here. He was losing too much blood, he realised with a start. It had been nearly a day ago that he had been ripped open by the goat's jaws and the blood had been dripping slow and clotted like since then.

Stupid, stupid, why hadn't he worried when the bleeding had never stopped? He realised now that it wasn't even showing a hint of attempting to close over or scab. His bare feet fumbled and he just barely managed to catch a tree trunk and stop from falling. He couldn't pass out, he couldn't lie down. If he did, he wouldn't get a chance to bleed to death as he slept, because he would be torn apart and eaten before he had the pleasure of passing on his own accord. He could hear the giant vultures rustle about in the branches above him, watching him from their nests and perches. The goats also didn't like to come under the trees because that's where the vultures lived.

He needed to be awake, he needed to be healthy. He needed to be seeing and hiding from predators before they could sneak up on him. He figured that even though he seemed to be able to recover from death, it wouldn't do him any good if his body was strewn about numerous animals' digestive systems or smeared across the ground.

It happened about then, that he heard some annoying tune coming from deeper in the trees. No, it wasn't annoying actually, it was amazing, breathe taking. Panda drew towards it and followed it like a moth to a flame. Eventually, after a while of stumbling through the tight trunks of the beach side trees, he found them, a line of stick carrying, back packs perched along their backs, all singing a marching song together.

They started at him, covered in sand; sew through with mud, arms torn open; him. He started at them, ironed shirts; cotton socks yanked up, water bottle holding; them.

He collapsed. Some of them screamed, others went over to help him. The leader just rolled his eyes, another foolish tourist had through they could handle the two day nature walk on their own.

I came to realise that there was something of a language barrier happening between the hiking group and I. After many war's, see's, nan's and chi's I was pretty sure that these people were Japanese- eighth grade Japan studies was good for something after all, (besides the big boobed teacher who liked to lean over desks, hitch up her skirt, smack her lips and be caught in the toilets sucking on the PE teacher's neck.)

I didn't bother with wondering how the hell I had ended up in Japan. Because as it stands, there are goats prowling the beach like jackals and the car sized bird things that glare down at prey from their tree top nests.

I just want my home; I've wanted it since the first day in jail. I want the wind to carry my cigarette smoke away, I want the friends to run up and tackle me down, I want the cack faced Dutch lady who was getting her ninetieth sun cancer cut out. I wanted the douche bag grocery store loiterers who stubbornly wear their leather jackets in the midday heat, becoming shinny with sweat.

I want the festival girls who stare at the clouds too much and sigh as they day dream at the side of the class. I want the old war man who smirks at you and gets drunk before he's had time to become sober. I want the glum teacher who doesn't look too close at any of the black kids and lives in the drug dealer motel.

I want the button shirted, bespectacled documentary maker who was contracted to the town for six years to film the Wilder beast and nigh time birds. I want the deep eyed classmate who was just starting to talk to me, my friends, the air which has been ironed thin from the heat and the dusty streets of my beloved seaside city.

We walked with the sunset coming all around, smouldering across the entire heavens. I allowed myself to be pushed along, help, help, it's magnificent. Great bands of mist started to coil through the darkening air and beat against my goose bumped and crusty-with-dry-blood skin. A lady walking alongside me was fumbling as she stuck a crummy little band aid over one of many gaping wounds, a purple haired guy was offering me his water bottle and I gulped its tinted water down greedily.

Even after lights of a town came into view and the shelter of a roof tripped over my head. Even now, long afterwards, I cannot deny the images. I had died out there, when you have died and then painfully seizure alive again- you just don't glide away from your death place without scars. They remain with me like the yearnings of an addict, the feelings and the images; the pain and the animalistic instinct of survival.

My brain knew even now- no matter what the reptilian instincts said- that this was the best option by far. To hurry along with the strange group to where ever and walk in a way that hid my limp, I didn't want them to slow down just for my sake, because this was a blessing, this was guardian angles on a whole other level.

The first week was a hospital bed and a drowsy, heavy time, because they must have drugged me up. The second week was me lazily seeing the front page of a newspaper what sat on the nurses cluttered coffee table. Then the hours of fixated starting at the thing; Gol D. Rodger, smirking in his last picture as his executioners stood ready. This was a horrible, it had to be joke, someone must have printed it out as a joke and this isn't true. But it wasn't. Because I was stuck here- and the great pirate era had just begun. It's all melancholy now, and troubles and nights and crashing and dyeing fill my eyes now.

You begin to feel strange when you're surrounded by the delicate and slanted faces of the Asian people. After all, I was blonde and brown eyed and fair enough for the royal ball, but my arms were thick and my body broad with some black blood that's in there from somewhere. My face was rich in lines and the swelling curves that dignify the race of the African's.

The beach is the only place where I can sit and not feel the rising wave of insanity draw slowly towards me. I lived along the beach where I had come from- no; I live along the beach- blue and deep, gritty but pure. There is no doctors or speech tutors hanging around me, poking and prodding at me to check I'm still good and sane. There is a sprawling, spreading hurricane of black, black ink on the edges of my vision. When I concentrate on things, concentrate really hard, sometimes all I can see is squares of blue, white and that black, black ink.

It started when I saw the newspaper, I realise.

The waves do not bat an eye at the kid who is rolling his trousers up and easing into the foaming water. I watch his hands fly up when the waves spray up and fly droplets over him; I watch as with each crash of a wave against his thighs, he is slowly being peeled back.

To youth, to freedom, to that simple-minded joy that everyone cries when they learn they accidently forgot kilometres back down the highway which leads to adulthood. Maybe that's my problem.

I stand up, because I want to. I don't bother to wipe the sand of my shorts, because I don't want to. I throw myself into the sea and I wonder as I slip and slid around in the arms and breathe of it all- how many times have I died with this same sight and touch and smell? Now days, the ocean is the end of it all, the start of it all, the damn well reason for it all.

It builds you up until you've had enough, then it forced you to become. Something. Become something. You will become.

Now I don't see the black hurricane; now I've got whispers. But that's okay.


	3. Entering Flotilla

The moon is so full you might think it's pregnant. It's glowing and shining, casting so many shadows. You might think it was actually carrying the Sun within itself.

There is a man, hollering on the busy street, his white larney coat glowing from the street lights that are in turn swarmed with moths and busy night clubbing bugs.

"Marine sign up! Marine sign up! Every child's dream! Just write your name and you're off! Your uniform is here and ready! Marine sign up!"

He has been here for days, every time I walk past him I snort, yeah right. But he sees me this time; he sees the patchy clothes and the hollowed cheeks. He changes his tune this time around and looks straight at me.

"Guaranteed bed! Five meals a day, breakfast, smoko, lunch, tea and dinner! Clean clothes every morning! Hot water! Soap! Guaranteed safety and care!"

I told him my name so that he could write it down- since I had picked the language up well…but the writing? Horrible stuff the writing is.

"Panda, hey? Never heard that before." Of course you haven't, panda is an English word. I just shrug my shoulders.

"Mal parents; what you going to do about 'em?" He nods in confusion at my accidently slipped slang, but looks sympatric none the less and points me the way to the ship. To a soft bed, five meals a day, clean clothes and a shower. To guaranteed safety and care from the increasingly savage world this place is growing into.

I see the ship in the port, dwarfing the fishing trawlers but in turn being over shadowed by the passenger liners. It's tiny compared to the ones I know of from the show. It's hardly Grand line worthy. I climb up to the deck and there is only one man there. He is polishing his sword and eyes me up.

"Second one tonight." He sighs and points me to the cabin door. "In there." It's strange to have to stand and let yourself be examined and then sighed at. Of course, I chose to forget all raised eyebrows when people see me. Was it that obvious that I knew nothing about high sea fighting or wrestling sea kings? I never get any questions about who I was; just a marine uniform and directions to the shower rooms. My reunion with the shower is marvellous and empowering, but fleeting all the same, because these showers are on three minute timers- but it's enough. Oh damn is it enough.

The large, commercial shower rooms are empty. I stare at the foggy mirror for a long time. I look a sukk. Hungry and bruised from the cold. How did it get this bad? I was taken into the concerned arms of the village straight away, but once the pirates started pouring through I was dropped like poison. I didn't think it was that long ago, didn't think I was this bad.

I ship is still and dark, I follow the distant echo of rowdy laughter, its inside and I march through. Inside is tables of marines laughing, drinking and playing cards. This is my life now; I can't help but smile and feel the beginnings of excitement. There is a bench full of plates and steaming, wafting food. I run to it, I grab a plate and tower it with mashed potatoes, grilled fish and steamed vegetables. I eat and then go back for seconds and eat. Soon an arm is hocked over my shoulder and someone pulls me into their game.

"Hey, newbie!"

"How's it going newbie?"

"Know how to play snap newbie?"

Don't ever play snap with New World marines, they accidently break your hand in the snapping frenzy. Everyone though it was funny, especially the doctor. It wasn't.

It's decided early on next morning that I'm too much of a weakling to be a soldier, not smart enough for the doctors and not tough enough to work in the cargo bay. I am a cook now. But that's okay, there's food in the kitchen, smells and a bustle of shouts as people fly about catering for a thirty- something bottomless stomachs. I love this, this is good. I rapidly grown big because of the food and strong like the snoek because of the wake up, rise and shine, its morning, seize the day drills that everyone is put through.

Eventually the boat reaches a marine base, the newbies are unloaded like cargo, and the whole twenty nine of us are then handed over to real training.

The brick walls look like they a crawling; as if they are made up of thousands of worms tangled together, grumpy, struggling, and splurging ground digging animals. My lungs are burning, muscles dead, head swirling and now eyesight going by the looks of it. This is what my days are now. Every morning I wake up and until I go back to my safe, sweet bed I am being pulverised over and over and over again by bullets of pain and work.

By the end I'm noticeably stronger, but for Christ's sake, throughout it I was a noticeable hair's breathe away from death. They finally decided I was ready to be posted after I snapped and attacked the drill sergeant. Of course I didn't win, but for some reason they responded with "I think you are ready, my boy." Actually, this could just be the highest level of punishment. Getting posted to the real deal.

"So you're the newbie?" So this is Garp.

"You look puny!" You're massive!

"How are you going to survive?" How am I going to survive?

"Come on, meet my crew! Be nice, they bite!" Nice? Like hell these guys are nothing like Keif! I've got three exits and a 5% vloek of managing an escape. If I plan this right I might be…

"Fresh meat as arrived! Everybody come close and see how juicy he is!" …0.5% probability of being alive my morning,

"My bad, I'll fix that, I wasn't looking where I was going! Sorry about that chef man, didn't mean to rip out your wall, I'm just so pumped! Everybody! Fresh meat!"

I sat wide awake all night in my new bed, twitching at every noise, fists clenched and ready to lunge out and bliksem if I ever had to. By first light I had gained permanent worry wrinkles and was stiff from the constant pump of fear and adrenaline.

A reasonably sane officer approached me during the breakfast or chow down time as it was called. He wanted to tune to me in his office, he told me about his job aboard the ship on the way there. Basically he was the secretary of the place… but don't say that out loud, I had seen him snap a table over an officer's head before.

"I understand you're not very good in combat… not very confident."

"Yeah, my body is just a lot weaker because I was starved a lot as a child." That was my story and I was sticking to it, nooit was I saying that 'yeah, I come from a world where humans aren't as freakish as here so…'

"Have you thought about a different job on the ship?"

"I was a cook before but, that's not really something I want to get too far into."

"You know, how about you partner up with me. I've worked this job for twelve years and it's more than meets the eye. I think you've got a good knack for it from what I've heard about you." Whoa… an office job?

"I don't think… I mean, I can't read or write and I never liked doing that sort of stuff…" A shuffled and tried to turn the offer down, but the man just started to grin. I realised than that a man who can grin like that when talking about his job, well, it might be a job worth looking into. "But, you know, if you think I'll do well than I can give it a shot, but don't get your hopes up."

"Oh, don't you worry; I know you'll shape right up."

And I did, so bloody well. Sending damage reports back to HQ about what Garp's carelessly destroyed, karate chopping chefs when they over use the food supply and intimidating hard fisted bankers on the islands. This is not filing and writing out reports, this is an adventure every day, to what you're doing to throw at the brick headed Garp or who you're going to manipulate around your little finger.

Soon, I've been posted for years and I have travelled four blues and up and down the Grand line thousands of times.

I follow Luffy in the newspaper. It's crazy to know what's going on, know what they are probably going through right now. I dread the moment when they reach the point I know up to- and then go beyond. Then I won't know everything, all I will know is that his bounty climbs, the adventure will come to be through the skinner at the bar…soon he will finally make it to be the Pirate king. Then the show will end, but I will still get to watch on. Maybe I will meet him one day, and I can say that I travelled with him from when he left his tiny little Dorp. I can tell him I'm as much a crew member as Merry, always there, listening and watching your journey, ready to lay it all on the line for you. Because I know Luffy, I know who he is and what he has done. I am ready to truly lay it all down. Maybe one day we will meet, and I'll be able to explain.

It's scary when Coby, the pink haired one and the other blonde join. It's scary in Water Seven when we meet and he's right there. But you can't, you just can't, you've just got to stop and think it through, and there will be your reason why to not say a word.

Garp got called to HQ, they told him to be on hand and guard Ace from the anticipated Whitebeard attack, told him to bring ten of his strongest fighters. I watched him go, and I wished there was time to tell him about what awaited on the other end of all this.

But that's not to be. Life is meant to be about me pointing the ship straight and keeping the skommies good, drinking Dop, throwing chairs and dossing to the rock of waves. Garp is not to be tangled with, he is a character, a plot driver in a bigger thing all together.

So now, when Garp's ship sails by, know that I'm on board. Living the good life.


	4. Meeting Hell

"World Nobles... Slaves... Human shops... Against the "purity" of these "upper classes", the villains of the world look positively humane in comparison. It's because the world's in the hands of scum like them that it's all screwed to hell... I mean, we're not the nicest of guys, but at least we're honest about it." - Eustass Kid

Terry wasn't really sure when she noticed that she was collapsed, or when she realised that she could smell the ocean. She lay still for a long time, feeling and smelling only the two disorienting senses. Maybe she had been caught in a bomb blast and this was her coming out of a coma in the hospital?

She wasn't sure of anything, when had she moved and huddled against a wall?

Sitting in the shadows, stinging from insect bites, lips dry and sore from the salty wind, she shivered from the sudden heat flush that passed over her and the rapid loss of control over her muscles. She felt tired and her eyes stung whenever she opened them.

So for days Terry suffered in the shadowy corner, hidden by bins and old boards. It was as if she was trapped inside a neglected doll, watching the busy people pass through the street in front of her, listening to their strange jabbering words, and all the while she could feel her body repairing. Not in the way of feeling better, but more in that she was getting more control and sense back. The slippery glue was being replaced by neat and strong stitches, reattaching her mind and nerves back together.

She could move her arms and once she had tried to stand, but fell back down in a heap, she would make noises but none of them loud enough to her heard or clear enough to be words.

Then, at some time during the glittery night, her body was back again. It took her a while of tripping and leaning heavily, but she was standing and moving, soon walking and rushing towards the only person see could see, dressed in a swanky gown and crying against a wall, obviously wanting to be alone after a day gone wrong.

Well too bad, because my day was worse.

The island was a summer one, always hot, heated and humid, when he glanced at it from their ship's deck it looked flat and over populated. He couldn't see anything besides grey buildings and structures that were over flowing right onto the dirty and wet sand of the beach and sometimes they were perched on stilts riskily sitting over the razor waves.

Yet even when it seemed hostile and unwelcoming, they sailed closer. There captain sure that this was the island he had been told about. It transformed into an ants nest, with what looked like thousands of colourful and busy insects scuttling all over it, in motley long shirts and sun dresses, carrying pots and bags, pulling along children or hauling in shiny scaled fish.

They had all been run off their feet and pushed to their limits over the last few months, with no halt. Every day had held a new pirate crew to fight, new islands to discover, all in the name of building themselves a presence. Their captain had been adamant that they needed to form themselves a name, so that not every visit to the grocery store was strife with fights and they didn't have to leave three behind to guard the ship when they pulled into port. If they did this right, there reputation should soon be enough to make sure no wondering hands unhooked their floating home.

Their flag would mean something on this new sea, which they all agreed on. Their muscles shrieked every morning from the effort they had to exert to achieve this, and all of them were eager to use this holiday to do nothing but sleep and eat. With peaceful days, filling big meals and lengthy hours of nothing but naps and lying under shade to hide from the blistering sun like fat cats.

They drew into the island's only wharf and everything felt grainy and brittle from the salty water, the planks of the dock groaned under their weight and whenever the ship pulled on the rope, ready to collapse from the years of the seaside treatment. It looked a sorry sight and they wondered why their captain had insisted in this place in particular.

They had tried to convince the captain to take them to Paradise Island; it had been voted this year's 'Number One Destination for a Pirate on Holiday'. But he hadn't changed his mind at all, he said someone had suggested this island to him and it sounded perfect for what the crew was looking for. Even though the island was small with a large local population, it had no crowded beaches, queues to get into the bars or other trouble makers trying to pick fights. It seemed the residents spent a lot of their time in the patchwork and propped-up-on-stilts town then they did out on the water and taking time out in the saloons. Some strange work enthusiasm these people had, but every island to its own, every native culture had its quirks.

The island was in fact as flat as it looked- but not nearly as crowded. They were all amazed to actually witness how none of its inhabitants spent much of their time fishing and walking along the beaches, it was just something that locals had with their island, relaxation only in the spring months. Right now it was coming out of summer into autumn. All of the tide pools and shallow beaches were deserted. Sand bars stretched their long fingers out into the mangrove ridden sea and not a sole could be seen when you looked away from the balancing, kilometre long metropolises.

It was obvious now that the path they had sailed into the island on had been dug purposefully, there was no such thing as water deeper than five meters here. Many shabby and thin wharfs had been nailed together over the tidal beaches and webbed out over the clear water for it to just look like they reached for the horizon when you gazed out from the beach. Wayward canoes were resting along the banks or tethered man-less amongst the shore growing trees. They spent their time on the island in a lethargic haze.

Glass thin fishing lines barely broke the smooth surface of the sea, the mangroves which were thick and ringed around the island sheltered it from the waves, making the water on the beaches calm. Lightweight hooks floated down through the clear and cool water, halfway if you wanted a juicy silver fish or resting on the sand bed if you felt like some sweet crab flesh. Slowly filling the bucket at your side over the day's long and pregnant hours, until the sun started to weep orange, bleed the sky red and cry pink.

They would stroll back over the elevated paths from out on the sea to the shore, shirtless, pants rolled up to the knees and a full bucket swaying by their side held by a recently sun kissed hand. They would meet other members along the way to the shore or none at all.

They ate dinner at one of the many restaurants that sat along the beach's edge; the island's restaurants specialised in having their customers provide their food, their day's catches cooked for them, served with a slice of lemon and glass of water. It was cheaper to dine and tasted better when this was the fish that I caught over near these ragged rocks, I remember how I had to get into the water because I got the line caught around them.

The On Air Pirates were a rowdy crew, hectic in the way they talked and loud in the way they walked, but the tranquil and serene island made them experience hours of silence were they sat with the only through on their minds being based around the warmth of the sun on their arms and the tickle of sand against their skin.

They spent the week dozing alone, legs dangling over the wharf edges or stretched out in a drifting canoe, sleeping in the dabbled shade from above.

At the end of every day they gathered in the bars and eateries together and enjoyed the brief holiday that the Captain had allocated them for being such a blameless crew.

Because they had just marked themselves out in the New World.

On the fourth day, when they had finished recuperating and felt like doing more than slumbering all day, two went on a walk through the shanty like town, the captain skipped off to find an audience and the rest went spear fishing out under the rocks and behind the great submerged ship wreck.

"Have you read the newspaper at all?"

"Nah,"

"Apparently the Marines are reviewing their entire Grand Line operations, after how many times the Luffy kid slipped through their fingers."

"They say that the admirals were so pissed off that they hunted him down and sliced his head clean off."

"No, not Straw Hat, not with Rayleigh and Jimbe looked after him."

"That's just what I heard."

"Hey."

"Hmm?"

"Do you feel like we're being followed?"

"You too? It's kind of annoying."

He turned suddenly to try and see who it could be, and his eyes meet the person immediately. It was a filthy looking girl who was walking unsteadily and looking around uneasy, she was making no attempt at discretion, following just meters behind them, her bare feet tapping lightly against the planked path as she moved.

"Captain, we have someone pleading for our help."

The captain had been busy dancing around and playing a song, the bar's customers and tenders were thundering from all the clapping and cheering, quickly changing to a loud echo as the occupants let out sounds of final farewelling applause when their entertained creased his entertainment.

"Who?" The long armed captain strained to be herd over the noise "I had suppose people would start asking for favours once we became known, but not this soon. What is it, a town that needs help to over throw their evil ruler?"

The Captain had always had an over active imagination to how things would be in their pirate life. When he was announced as a supernova he had pranced around the ship—This is it boys! We will be up to our necks in alliances and requests! That never happened; instead they got bounty hunters and marine interest where ever they went. Which ruined their parties, something which the On Air Pirates were very proud of hosting.

"More like a damsel in distress."

"Those really exist? Bring her right here, this is a childhood dream you know!"

He was always in the good mood the captain, but Taiko worried how well that mood would hold after he meet the girl.

"Yeah, but we seem to have a language problem."

The grubby girl walked in, her head held low and her eyes peeking out from her knotted hair. She didn't have a thin frame or was even that short, but standing amongst some of his thick set crew members she looked inconsiderable.

Then she broke into strings of gabble, none of it comprehensible.

"Can she understand us?"

"No"

The captain hummed in thought, bemused by the urchin.

"Why did you assume she was asking for our help?"

"Well, some of the stuff we understood, like she kept saying Monkey D. Luffy, Grand line and thank you all the time. Over and over again until we just decided to take her to you."

"Yeah, you said you knew over three hundred languages." The crew member beside the speaker rolled his eyes and gave the captain a pointed look.

"Oh...well, yes I do, but this girl is speaking on so foreign that I cannot recognise a word."

"That lost is she?"

"Yes."

The girl started to speak again, but this time, even though it was thick with an accent and pronounced at parts wrong, she was saying Monkey D. Luffy over and over again. She started tearing up and it made everyone watching in the bar uncomfortable and shifty.

"So, what does this mean about anything?"

The girl suddenly got on her knees; she looked uncomfortable and unfamiliar with the gesture as she knelt on the floor, saying please over and over again like she had with straw hat's name. The please was even worse, thick and without the usual flow that they were used to hearing it said in.

He didn't like to turn people away; a party never turns away, and especially sickly looking girls who were in front of him crying their hearts out.

"Fine, we will…" What was it that she needed? "Take her to straw hat, or whatever she needs."

He winked at his crew so they would get his drift, all understanding because there was no way they would accept someone like her onto their ship. They were navigating the most dangerous seas in the world and weak links couldn't be tolerated. A rule they had about crew members was if someone needed to look after you then you weren't worth looking after.

Then she was looking up at him, in reacting to when he said "straw hat", she started repeating that too. Her strange appearance fully hitting him just now as he got to see her without that dishevelled hair in her face. She was not like anyone he had ever seen before, with a funny nose and a face completely marred with freckles. Her eyes were wide and her face was in a shape that he had ever imagined faces to come in.

Unusual appearances were something people on the high seas consider a daily occurrence, fish folk, giants, even his own long armed tribe. Strange always suggesting a potential to be interesting and powerful. There was something…detailed about this girl.

All mysterious foreigners ended up being powerful; it was a law or something.

"I think I know what has happened here." He nodded around as the two present members of the six man crew. "She must have been slave marketed because she is some sort of royalty or has some secrete power. This chick is diffidently coming with us, we can teach her to talk and then she will be so grateful of our help that she gives us our own island."

"Can't we just take over an island?"

"Gives us enough money to by an island then."

"That sounds good"

"I like the sounds of that"

"She can be a deck hand"

"Nah, looks to delicate"

"An assistant to Betsu then"

"Yeah, then he can make yummier food and stop complaining about having no help."

Numerous cries went up at this, all in all it seemed like this was turning into a jackpot.

Their new crew member must have some monster in her blood, she just looked so outlandish. He was even more willing to take her on now, they had all convinced themselves she came with abilities that she didn't actually have.


	5. Meeting Pirates

Jailor, Grudge, Jewel, Long Tom, these fish sure had interesting names. Betsu stood reading the fish poster in the dingy but respectable restaurant. A heavy bucket was hanging from his scared hands, but this time it was not filled with the day's kills. It was loaded to the brim with salty, sandy water with seven fingernail thin fish in it. Swimming around in circles, quick and slow, some darting anxiously just under the surface, others imitating rocks on the metal bottom. His crew members, who were sitting across the room, snicker amongst each other when they spotted him.

"I can't wait for when he sees her."

"Quick, call him over."

"I can't, I'll break down laughing." All at the table glanced at the girl, who was sitting up the end, head swivelling around the room, taking it all in. The empty chair beside had been left purposely for their argumentative chef.

Betsu had awoken with a flourish last night, darted into his kitchen, cleared and measured a spot he liked very much and set into town just as the black gave away to grainy grey to purchase himself a fish tank. He had a lot of weird moments like that, surges of determination and sudden ideas. The reason for his rush was that the crew would be sailing out in three days, he wanted to get his tank up, settled in and have all problems found and fixed before they raised anchor.

He found a lovely twenty dollar one, second hand, glittery horse stickers on the side, a permanent water line stained around the top, but he was extremely proud when he carried it back to the ship. Answering his curious crew mate's questions with '_you'll see' _and '_my own money_,' Betsu was notorious for his tight fist, so they all got a great more interested in what he was doing after that. The chef spent most of his morning scrubbing it clean and pondering how he wanted it to look. Not for the first time thinking how lovely it was to be on holidays, no meals to worry about cooking up, because feeding his crew was a task and a half.

"Betsu," The chef looked to where the speaker, Isuto, was standing in the doorway, he wobbling at the distraction as he tried to lift the heavy glass tank up on the bench.

"We're all leaving for that breakfast café. Do you want to come?" Betsu thought about it, torn between fluffy scrambled eggs and setting up his fish tank. He slid the container in place as he thought it over.

"I'll come over when I've finished here. You guys go on ahead, order something for me."

"Kay." The lumber built man walked away, his shadow moving and letting the kitchen rejoice in early morning light once more. Betsu scratched at his head as he paced around the kitchen. Sitting at the table, going out and walking back in, pretending to chop vegetable and cook at the stove. He decided that he wanted it so he could see it well when he was cooking, something to watch while he waited to flip the bacon.

He grew very excited, and dashed happily out on deck and jumped over the side, sprinting to the fish shop to buy some fish. He paused for a moment; the ship was unmanned now, would it be safe? Captain had said it was safe and not to worry anymore, but he was a worrier. He turned around, took in his crews great magnificent home, dwarfing all the battered trawlers around it. He would be quick, he reassured himself, and they had been leaving it alone for hours at a time since they got here.

Yes, the ship could handle itself for the time being. He started off the fish shop again, like an excited child running for the zoo gates.

The first thing Betsu learned in the fish shop was that everything was overpriced. He didn't even like the look of most of these fishes! He thought that the pet shop would have the charming fish that swirled in its island's waters. But it just stocked tropical diseased looking things and chunks of unhappily swimming meat. He took note of their tank displays though, stones and driftwood, plants and manmade decorations.

None of this was what he had envisioned though; he had wanted it to be like taking a piece of this island's waters. So whenever he, or indeed the crew looked at it, they were reminded of their sunny, sleepy stop over on the shanty sanctuary. He decided that a fish handbook would be the only thing he would buy- _thirteen dollars! _A fish handbook would be the only thing he would steal.

He learned a great many things as he ate his breakfast amongst his musical crew. Fork in one hand, book in the other, not concerned a whiff for the odd lump of food that soared over his head. Fish keeping was not very popular or too well known, especially out on the sea. _Probably why they had such a small range_ he though dully _not too much money in fish_.

As Betsu read deeper into the book he slowly got more and more unwilling to follow his dream. Did you know that you needed a filter, not just to clean but also oxygenate the water? And a light, a water heater, holes to hid in, antioxidants for the water, weekly cleaning- and don't get him started on amount of care needed for salt water! He wasn't spending the amount this was starting to clock up to. No, he made up his mind as he set the book down and sipped his orange juice. He wasn't going to do this commercially.

He watched as a lovely waitress cleaned up his empty plate, and he realised that it was far too quiet, he looked around to find that he was the only crew member left in the café. Oh, wait, the captain was dancing across the room, surrounded by an audience. That man was addicted to performing, but at the same time he feared crowds too big, a weird man, but they were all strange like that. That's why places like this were perfect for him. _Too easy for someone to strike you down in the commotion of a big crowd, _their captain had always worried_; stampedes eminent, large numbers attract hostile attention. _

Betsu rested back, and thought his tank over. The book had been saying that plants oxygenated just a well as the machines; grab some sand, rocks and wood from the beach. Catch some little fish; in fact, it would be nice to watch them grow. He could move the tank over to beside the window, which should look spectacular with the sun behind it. Salt water quality control? He could scoop the water from the ocean: easy. Keeping the fish warm when they went to winter islands? The kitchen was heated, wrap in a blanket if the need came. He was sure that everything was worked out; all he needed was a leak proof bucket and a net. Of course, he noted to himself, they will have to be pretty bomb proof fish to survive his minimalist care.

The brown, blonde tip haired chef spent his day hot and heavy, waste deep in sea, combing for ornaments to put up on the low tidal walkways, next to his bucket. He startled many creatures, and many a times he would come across a school of fish just the size he was looking for. They were lighting quick bastards though; he was empty handed in the subject of fish all day. That was until the breathtaking sunset starting, looks like they sedated the fish just as much as the people. He made sure they weren't all one type, and that none looked like they possessed the ability to eat all the others. Just like the book said, there were fish that preferred to slink along the bottom, cruise near the top and hang in the middle, he made sure like, the book had noted, to get a good mix of all.

Betsu had hurried as the shadows grew into long, gnarly witch's fingers, which clawed across the landscape and mapped and spun, almost rivalling the ragged, stump, all-embracing network of jetties. Betsu started to hurry back into the town, wanting to get his finds in the tank in time for tea, but the water started to slosh around and spill out, so he was forced to take his steps steadily. He had spent his entire day collecting what swam and laid inanimate in the bucket, he wasn't going to be reckless with it.

The moon was high, the streets dark and the people smelling like aftershave and perfume by the time he made it back. For all his friend's lazy manners and carefree actions, they would worry very seriously so if he was late. Tea was official, tea was meeting time and tea was where they counted heads. Betsu sighed heavily as he slipped though the restaurant's door, abandoning his hope of continuing on to the ship that glittered on the black sea in the distance.

He could hear his mob instantly, down the back, empty buckets under their chairs, looks like the cooks had collected the catches already. He started over, but was distracted by a big, colourful poster on the wall. It had pictures of all the fish and information on them. Betsu glanced at the ones in his bucket, and tried to match them up. Most looked identically, some were missing certain spines or markings. But he supposed those were things that came with age. Then he heard his crew mates roar his name, this was… peculiar. They hadn't missed him _that _much had they?

He rotated around to face them gradually, suspiciously, eyeing off there flushed and merry faces. They called out again, gesturing for him to come. He navigated though the tables and dinners carefully, determined not to unsettle his bucket of fish.

"We've got a surprise for you!" His captain hectically waved his long arms around as he absolutely beamed at him.

All the others murmured and talked to him at once, in their excitement failing to realise that not a word he could decipher. Then he saw the girl, sitting up the end, next to the only free chair, he sloshed over, was this the surprise? The captain had told them he wasn't recruiting anymore. Every one of his friends were explaining it all to him, but all at the same time, so all he gather was that there was a very long and interesting story behind this. He just sighed, a noise which wasn't audible over the chatter, he slide his full bucket under his chair cautiously and collapsed into his seat. He had been on his feet all day, he was tired and burned. Deciding that he would be filled in later by the captain, the most sensible, yet most absent minded, but usually the one that took the initiative. Sometimes he felt like the only capable on, he really did.

He turned to the young lady, she looked exhausted and oily, her cherry blonde hair was knotted and riddled with dirt and her lips were peeling painfully. She was watching him with a weary gaze, her appearance was outlandish, even to him, who has seen a lot of strange people, she wasn't instantly bizarre, but the more you looked at her, the more she became eerie and abnormal.

"Should she be here?" He asked the shipwright next to him.

"What do you mean? She's our new crew member." He really didn't care; this woman looked like she had crawled her way out of an abandoned mineshaft after ten months of wandering.

_Try ten months of living on the street_

"She looks like she needs medical attention. Where's Isuto?" He scanned the table for the doctor, but came up empty.

"He dashed off to the chemist, should be back soon actually." Okay Betsu, calm down, you're a chef not a doctor. He was a worrier, and he wasn't necessarily very proud of it.

"She doesn't speak Japanese." _What?_

"We decided that she would become your kitchen hand." _What!?_

He spun around to the girl, this time very, very sure that his worry was very, very well placed. He watched her carefully from then on, how she picked at her food when it came out, how she followed them like she was tied with an invisible lead when they left for the ship, how the crew reacted to her, he came to the conclusion that she was a cat.

A stray cat, that the captain had though looked interesting, picked up off the street and tucked under his arm. She was going to become the ship's cat, he had heard about _actual _sailor cats. They were wise things that attached themselves to a boat, slinked away when they were anchored at ports but were always hiding in the crow's nest or hunting amongst the supplies in the hull when the ship pulled out. They spent their time basking in the sun on the deck, pouncing at your feet from under the stairs and meowing for a dish of milk at the chef.

The thing was, he scratched his chin in frustration, this wasn't some odd tabby, this was a girl, woman, lady, person and she sure wasn't going to hunt those pesky mice in the cupboards. But he had to accept it, because the language barrier reduced her and she wasn't helping herself by melting into walls and shadows and walking in such an animalistic and wild way.

Looks like the crew had a cat. He was not impressed. A cat, which instead of hunting mice was going to help him cook. He was not impressed.

Even now as they clambered up the ramp into their ship, she waited to last and scuttled up soundlessly. She instantly and smoothly darted into a deep shadow; her only give away the fact that he had seen her hide herself there.

The crew was piling inside the cabin, someone was brushing their teeth over the side, another, with his pyjama's in hand, headed off for the shower rooms. Everyone was just assuming that he would sort the girl out. Where was she going to sleep? What was she going to wear? He had no fucking idea! He was in the middle of a break down, but he was determined not to let his gaze move from the dark where the cat (- girl! Girl, she was a girl,) had enveloped herself in. He was sure, the second she was able, she would be stashing herself away somewhere and drop from the face of the earth.

Then he heard heavy footsteps jogging up the plank. He turned to see Isuto, a bursting bag in each thick hand. The black skinned man whirled his head around, taking in the scene.

"Where's the girl?" Oh, good. He takes back saying he was the only capable one, Isuto was now the greatest person in existence. Betsu pointed to the shadow, making sure the doctor understood.

"I've come to a realisation," the chef started as the afro haired doctor set his bags down. "She has become the ship's cat, hasn't she?" Isuto stared at him, the man's sharp and thick features looked terribly mournful.

"Better a ship cat then a street rat." Betsu rolled that little pearl of wisdom around in his mind for a while, sighing at how draining this day was being.

"Petto was saying that she does speak Japanese. Is that true?"

"It's worse than that. They swore she was rambling in a foreign language when they first meet, but by the time I meet her she was mute."

"What?"

"I think she's become a shock mute. I'm pretty sure that it would have been from the sudden," he gestured around at the ship, "this, civilisation, care, attention."

"Well… that's fucking brilliant."

"This is going to be tiring; she's probably lived her whole life on the street. I'm really worried that she won't know how to use a toilet or shower." Betsu just stayed silent to that, he had no reassuring words, because there was a very high possibility of it being true. Street rats were a major problem in this world, especially in the Grand line. It was so bad in some towns, that the marines came in and 'purged' the city, dragging urchins out of their muddy puddles to work as labourers or slaves for the government.

"Betsu, I can't get her to come out, can you grab some food from the kitchen."

"She won't he hungry, we just had dinner."

"Street rats never pass up food." Right. He walked away and zipped into his kitchen, pried open the fridge, contemplated what would be the best choice of food before deciding on a small bowl that had some leftover shaves of ham in it. As he was striding back, giddy with his and Isuto's new responsibility, he saw his tank, lonesome and quite. He reminded himself he had to move it over in front of the window and get those fish in- wait, those fish, did he bring them back?

Oh, shit. They were under his chair! He dashed out to where Isuto was crouching down, trying to ease the girl out as if she were in fact a cat. It was so demeaning for her but, how to go about something like this?

"Take this, I left my fish at the restaurant, I'm going to go fetch them." He squeezed it out in one breath to the man before jumping off the barrier of the ship and across to the wharf.

"They were stacking chair when I walked past before." He heard Isuto yell after him, he acknowledged it by speeding up so much he blurred. He had worked his ass off for those fish, logs and rocks. He refused for it to be in vain.

The night had a strong wind, chatter from the shore reached the ship and the banter of the crew was muffled but still playful as it came through the walls. It was quite besides that, waves lapping against the boat, ropes straining and insects buzzing. That was what Betsu returned to, a lonely deck. He wondered if she was still in the shadows, watching him. That girl was out of his hands now; with he was thankful for, Isuto had taken on the task of caring for the miss, more or less.

He plodded into the kitchen and found the lights off and room empty, strange, usually they were mucking about at the table just before bed. Betsu moved his tank to in front of the window, and started to pull the rocks and branches from out of the bucket, arranging them in the tank, pouring the fish in and making runs down to the sea to scoop up water and slowly he filled it up to about the top. He didn't want it splashing out too much if when they hit ruff water.

It was marvellous, he stood back to admire it, the sand would settle in time and the fish would start to make themselves homes. The sea weed he had found swayed in its clumps. He had hidden an entire side wall with this beady stringy golden coloured stuff and had even come across half dead clumps of some spongy, blue coral which he hoped would take to life in his tank. The drift wood created quarries, arcs, tunnels, hollows and the rocks little over hangs and hidey-holes.

Yawning and stretching high, he decided it was time to get ready for bed. Dragging his feet into the bed room, the haddocks and mattresses managed to clutter the large bed room; he passed all those and headed for the yellow chest of drawers. Everyone had their own colour, that's what the crew had decided on as their identification system. He dug into the middle draw and found his boxer shorts under his winter coat, the riffled through for a singlet and then bounced towards a clean, cool shower.

It was outside the shower rooms that Betsu found Isuto, arms crossed and leaning next to one of the rooms someone was using.

"She knows how to use the shower." Isuto said to him when he caught sight of him.

"That's good," as an after though he added, "she really needed on too." He slipped away into his own room. Shedding his clothes, and stepping under the refreshing water. What a day.

When she had stepped into the shower, it intently ran brown. She cringed at the unfamiliar feeling of hot water. She knew it wasn't rather hot at all, in fact, the man had probably run it nice and lukewarm for her. It's just that her skin was unconditioned. She had shoved him out, and then did the first brave thing she had done in months. Stripped. It was terrifying to see, finally, up close in the mirror, what she had become. Bony thin, infested sores, when she ran her hand over her tummy fleas crawled away across her skin. She wanted nothing more than to submerge into a boiling vat of ointment. Get them off me! She started with pocking her right foot under the falling water, washer in hand she scrubbed herself raw, from between the toes to behind the ears. She imagined that it took her an eternity; it flew for her though, she could have stayed there, sitting on the tiled shower floor, cleaning herself over and over.

But her hair refused to submit, no matter how much shampoo or conditioner she spilt and rubbed in. She crept out and started to search the basin for some scissor, she wanted to cut it off, rid herself of the torturous ordeal. All it was to her now was a nest of lice and fleas.

But instead she found a razor, turning the thing over in her hands the first smile in far too long flirted across her face. Prowling back into the shower, she slowly and with extreme enjoyment ran the bladed instrument over her legs gasping when she saw just how much hair was peeling away and swirling down the drain. As she did the other leg and her arm pits, a rush of confidence sailed through her body.

Now when she stepped out of the shower room, her hair was still dripping, but the rest of her towelled dry and clothed back into her smudged and stained clothes, she wasn't braced and tensed for an attack, she was coolly scanning around for the danger; come one, do your best.

_I've been to hell and back._

The charitable man had fallen asleep were he sat, leaning against the wall. No need to wake him up. She started to investigate the chillingly quiet ship, looking behind masks, scrambling up netting, opening boxes but never once going inside the cabin. They were all in there, all those dangerous men.

After she had stuck her nose in ever crack there was on the deck, satisfied that everything had been found, sniffed and prodded at, she went to shake the man awake. But she grew very aware that he might hit her in surprise with those gorilla arms. So she settled for slamming one of the three shower doors. He jumped up into a battle stance, when the bang rung through the silent night air. Terry narrowed her eyes, now very sure that her cautious nature was something she should hold onto. These were _killers_, not cookie making nuns.

She needed to make a choice, she needed this man's protection, she didn't want to stay on her own anymore and she didn't want every day to be a guessing game. No matter how much her insides flopped and her throat curdled, she forced herself to carefully patter over to him. He didn't try to reach for her or talk. Instead he stood, picked up the bags that she had yet to accept from him. She patted her hair making scissors with her hand and pretending to snip it away. It was simple and got the message across, but now he was trying to lead her inside.

She was _never_ going in there. He left the bags outside and went in himself, disappearing into the cabin. She waited, the nigh was silver and bathed in moonlight. She turned her ears into the sounds around her, the crash and slap of waves as they suicidally threw themselves against the titanic pirate ship and the dinghies nodding about it.

The man appeared again, with a small waste basket and a pair of heavy scissors. She made it very clear to him that he was not coming anywhere near her with those, growling and darting back. Very, very clear, so much so that he instantaneously dropped the two things down and back all the way through the door and into the cabin.

Now she was alone again, and she felt safe enough to slink up to the dropped goods. With her head over the basket she started to chop and slice, clumps, like fur balls and great matted tennis balls were fall out. She snipped some more and hacked at the troublesome parts. In the end it was disfigured and dreadfully cut, but she didn't care, she was rid of it. Now all she needed was some lice shampoo her Mum used to wash her hair with and she would be rid of the itchy feet that she could still feel running about her scalp.

She wanted the man to come back now, but he was still inside. Terry sneaked up to door, trying to crack it open and peep in, as she slid up her feet knock over one of the plastic bags over. A few bottles rolled out, she couldn't read any of the strange scrawl but they were plain packaged and pretty self-explanatory. She dug deeper into the bag, blankets, shampoo, conditioner, tooth brush and paste, hair brush, blankets. Bulk packets of children sized top, shorts and underwear, it was the truth she though as she stared at the contents, she had determinate that much.

She gathered the bags and rushed off, intent to put the items to use. Locking the door behind her, she pulled her clothes away, grabbed the hair bottles and just lathered herself. One was the lice shampoo she had been wishing for, she could tell by the tea tree smell. She loved that smell, so overpowering and distinctive.

The chemicals stang her sores when they ran down her body, but she had always associated pain with the healing process. The sea water was good for wounds, the salt disinfected it, and so whenever she got impaled or gashed her skin somehow, she sat out in the waves. It stung, how it stung, but she was sure it saved her from fatal infections more than one time.

The new clothes didn't scratch at all; they just hung off her bones and brushed against her skin as soft and cool as silk, in fact she was sure they _were _silk. The tooth brush dug into her weakened gums and she spat out a small trail of blood, but that was just something bad health brought you.

Terry grabbed her supplies, the two bags, and slipped out into the humid night air. Soundlessly she found the spot she had noticed back before when she had been inspecting the ship. There was a huge crate, and tangled over and one top of it was kilometres of rope, all looped and twisted. She pulled some of the thick as an arm anchor rope over the side, so it hung half off. Burrowing inside, it was like weaving a nest, she pulled out one of the blankets, it was a thick and thermal one, which she used to layer her nest with and then she squirmed inside, pulling her supplied after her. Curling up, she wriggled a bit to get comfy and pushed some rope across to cover the hole she had made.

They would never find her here, not even with the assistance of the Sun. Terry had slept in many places, and amongst anchor rope was something she had done before. Ships sometimes abandon whole coils of it at the dock, once it starts to disintegrate from use.

The door squeaked open, and she listened sleepily as footsteps started to pace around the deck, a heavy voice called out and another pair joined him. She heard then discusses something hastily, heard the loud clank as one jumped down on the wharf planks. The other rambled on and the two stood in silence for a while before softly going inside.

Their names were Betsu and Isuto. She wondered, had they been looking for her? Honestly, she was too tired to care, her eyelids dropped and she promptly fell into her best night of sleep in far, far too long.

"Captain, your cat has taken the stuff and made a run for it."

"She's my cat now?"

"We were just voting on a name."

"Yeah, since she's too scared to tell us her actual name."

"She probably doesn't have one."

"She's in really bad shape, we should find her."

"Trust the doctor to say that."

"Petto."

"Yeah?"

"Smell smell fruit?"

"Oh, yeah. I forgot about that."

They all piled out, the entire six man crew, all very interested in where the girl had got to. Isuto walked over to were the bin full of hair sat.

"I left her here, she didn't want he near with the scissors around." Everyone remarked at how heedful she was towards the doctor gentle handed.

"Right," the shipwright started sniffing the air, "she was here, and then she went over here." He followed the girl's trail, over next to the door, to the shower room. "Jesus, those chemicals always sting." The others watched him circle around in the tiled bathroom. "Had a shower…another shower if I smell correct, then went over… here?" The heavy jawed, mousey moustached shipwright stopped in front of a bundle of ship rope that was taller then him. Petto then suddenly swirled around with his finger on his lips.

"She's sleeping in there." He whispered and pointed into the rope.

"Really."

"Let me see."

"That doesn't look too comfortable."

"Look she's using the stuff you gave her."

"Scrubbed up real well."

"Come one, let's leave before you guys wake her up."

"Us wake her up? Never!"

"Shhh!"

"We quiet you moron."

They were all crowding and trying to squint through one small hole, the only place which they could see her. Slowly the doctor started to heard them away and back to their own beds.

"Should we leave her out here?"

"She looks happy enough."

"Do you think she will come to breakfast with us?"

"Probably not, hey, what names were you voting on?"

Everyone clambered to inform the doctor, there was Opaque (after the island she was found on,) Missy (because she was a miss,) and Linden (after their ship, Sturdy Linden.) When they piled into the kitchen, the captain stood up on a chair, struck a heroic pose and was calling for their attention until he was knocked off by Betsu.

"Chairs are for sitting on, not standing!"

No one voted for Opaque, which they thought was funny. Taiko, Betsu and the captain voted for Missy while Koto, Petto and Isuto voted for Linden.

So in the end, just before bed, they all decided that they would call her Miss Linden. Really, thought Betsu, as he collapsed on to his mattress and rolled under his sheet, they chose the worst names. He heard the others hammocks squeak as they adjusted into their comfy spots. He watched the half formed moon out of the porthole window until he heard Koto start snore. Only then was he relaxed enough to lull off to sleep, safe with the knowledge that he had friends (family, really) beside and above him. He was a worrier.

She woke was the fists rays of light danced across her face, like she does every day. Scuttling out of her nest and creeping over to side of the ship. Sitting on top of the barrier, legs dangling over, she watched the sunrise. She always watched it; _if it can continue then I can too_, tomorrow and the next day after that. The salt breeze kissed at her face and the seagulls cawed her a good morning. Usually she would set off for the water taps about now, while no one was around to chase her off. She wondered if any of the pirates were up yet, if the fridge was without a lock.

It had been two days now since she'd made a home on the pirate ship. Terry's fear had stopped boiling up at every turn, but it still sat on top of her heart like hot porridge. She liked the ship, she really did, she liked the charitable man as well, but everyone else gave her the creeps. It was a task to explain, just how there immense bodies, flowing with muscles, sewn together with scars and decorated with cold, nicked, weapons which hung from their backs and belts, managed to stir her fearful gut so violently.

She settled her thirsty mouth by guzzling water from the sink in the shower room. She rejoiced that it was still sweet, unlike the tap water from the city, which tasted heavy and chemical. She scuttled to the cabin door, cracked it open painfully slowly until it was enough for her bony body to fit through. Grabbing the first thing she saw, a loaf of bread, and dashing back out as quickly as she came. She had started to raid the cabin, more and more courageous ever time, but still, unfailing, wherever she stepped over the threshold, she felt like her body had been dropped in an ice bath.

Sitting in the shade cast from the figure head, she gorged herself on three pieces of bread, breaking an extra one for the curious seagulls that had perched near her. She stashed the rest in her nest; feeling immensely proud at the small pile of food she had amassed over the last few days.

She went and brushed her teeth, loving the glorious minty taste that it left in her mouth. There was no way she was leaving this ship.

_Until I find a way to get back, that is._

"Rise and shine, were setting sail today! Straight after breakfast, on your feet, I want to be moved out by nine!"

"Fucking navigator."

"Good morning to you too."

Taiko, who had been awake already and had been lying, thinking, in bed, asked the pancake like navigator a question.

"How do you think Miss Linden will go when we pull out?" But it wasn't the navigator that answered him; it was the doctor, who had been the one to take the most interest in the girl.

"She'll be fine," the man's plump lips stretched into a sure smile, "she's made herself a very permanent home out in that jungle of rope."

As the pirates were chatting, stirring and stretching, their cat was pouncing around out on the deck. She had spotted a mouse trying to get into her food pile, and wanted to make sure it never had the chance to do such a thing again.

A teeth filled smile split across her face. If she remembered back far enough, to a life that felt like a dream now, she could sense herself from back then, how different they had grown from each other!

The squeaks from the mouse as she lunged and trapped in in her hands, were like penetrating questions to her.

When you get back, will you still be standing in that jail corridor?

Or maybe she would have been labelled as an escaped prisoner and missing person?

Could a month here be a year back home?

Just how was she getting back?

Would she still be able to make a normal life for herself after all this?

Will she still have fear and stock pile her food?

_Will the spasms still come?_

She had experienced two small times of pain, lucky for they were both when she was the only on a board, they didn't suspect anything. But a big one was coming; she could feel it in the ways that her muscles cramped. In preparation or just reacting to her anxiety, she didn't know and she didn't necessarily care too much for the answer.

She was a fearer, that how it had always been.


	6. Meeting Madness

First day at sea:

They were very concerned for me, I could tell, with their enabling words and worried glimpses. It reassured me, because it wasn't leaving the island that twisted my innards in loops, it was that I would have no way to escape them.

Things can turn sour; I knew that better than anyone. I knew how shadows could run their fingers down your spine if they wished, I knew how alcohol looked as it glinted on a stumbling man's lips, I knew how it felt to have a hot tongue forced down your throat, I knew what swords could do. I knew what one piece was like when there was no screen to protect you, no cartoon drawings, no pencil lines, no editing or clean up, no bright colours and no tropical locations.

Second day at sea:

I guess it had to happen sooner or later. I have now moved my belongings and bed inside the ship. Was one day of constant contact, overhearing all their bubbly jokes enough to wear my fear away? I supposed it was a combination of that, the storm that had chased me to shelter and the fact that they had picked up on my biggest fear, drunken men, and had dumped all their grog into the sea.

They were going so far for me; I couldn't help but feel that I had to repay them by giving in at least a little.

Third day at sea:

Inside is much better than out. There are now so many places for me to curl into, so many laughs to overhear and so many names to learn. A lot of their belongings have marine insignias; it's amusing to see these pirates run around in singlets with the marine seagulls, sleep under blue and white sheets and drink from mugs that smugly display on their sides "Member of the Marines."

Sworn high sea plunders they truly are.

Fourth day at sea:

I sat at the table! With them; for dinner! I ate off a plate; I helped the ragged chef wash up, brushed my teeth alongside them, and just as everyone was exchanging goodnights… I regained my voice. Oh, the word was a poor imitation, croaky and too soft for them to notice, but it had returned to me and I embraced it with both arms.

I spent many hours under the moon, my language, parts of their language, reacquainting myself. I can't wait to see them in the morning, and to be able to parrot their greetings back to them.

Fifth day at sea:

There was such a great excitement on board; and it was all about me, I had never had such a fuss made over me, this feeling… was this what having an actual family felt like?

It's been six days since I meet them; there care has started to come through. I proudly watch my body fatten, ever so minutely, in the mirror. Wounds I've had, eating into my side, open and oozing, for as long as I can think back, have started to grow scabs and leave arranged, fresh scars. I think I look a bit like a leopard now; the scars are creating silvery spots and shapes all over my body.

Sixth day a sea:

Horror has stopped crowding into my judgement now; I jump and shiver a lot less in these Sun soaked and leniently winded days. It pleases my so much, to be able to regain some sort of control over my reactions and to shed that animalistic core that I had grown myself out of necessity. I have finally started the process of filching my existence back from the chops of confusion and hunger.

I helped the Petto fix the sails, I peeled some potatoes for Betsu, I finally took some of the medicine Isuto had given me, I assisted Koto with organising his maps, I found Taiko's missing shoes. I am slipping in amongst them; I love this crew, like you love the old flatbeds of the sea, because I fit so perfectly.

Seventh day at sea:

Just as the Sun was ducking down, a fight reaches my ears. It's like Chinese opera, groaning and squawking; all around I hear feet run over the deck and weapons being taking up. I had been fetching the chef a leg of roast from the cold room that was buried deep under the ship, so there I hid, hoping this was to pass. No one would think to look here, down in the lowest bowels of the vast ship…right?

There is the boom of cannons and hiss and splat of someone's devil fruit power. Roars and pounding, clashing and crying, I'm safe down here…right?

I darted out from my hide, switching off the lights just to be safe. I prefer nervously waiting out in the dark over possibly giving myself away. As I'm scuffling out of sight, the light is switched back on by a woman with a billowing head of hair. I must be craftier then I think to have managed to envelope myself in dusty old tarp without gaining her attention.

She goes on into the room, opening the many doors, turning around this way and that, her dark locks sliding and leaning as she moves. Someone calls out, there is another at the door, watching the fine women search. The other spits on the floor, the hard wood takes the insult to its existence expressionlessly.

I was a novice, but it sounded like he had said something about 'braking off', they both rolled out. The other lets something drop and roll into the room, as they continue away, I listen to their haunting steps which are now clinking up the spiralling stairs at the end of the hall.

I didn't like the look of the marble sized item that they had left behind, I hurried to grab it and throw it into the cold room. I didn't recognise it nor understand what it was capable of, but I knew that, whatever its intentions, it would be best it carried them out in the sub zero chamber. The oil stinking metal walls were as thick as a river mouth, and the ice that coated the monstrous hollow's insides only added to its properties that are similar to the bomb shelters that I have seen.

I was dragging the hatch-locked door closed, when the small ball let itself go, with a force that sends me lurching onto my back, doors grinding back against walls and turns the room grey-blue with newly airborne dust and wreckage. I lay, in pain that I am familiar with, and eavesdrop on the chatter that has erupted in the room. The chatter of fire as it eats its wood or cotton host.

I feel a right good idiot, resting and knowing, but with no way of moving or telling. By the time I had successfully convinced my eyes to open; my back was soaked in blood and sweat. The room was a roiling in flame, looking so much like hell that I wondered if death wanted me to come back into his arms.

Over the elevated smoke and chewing fire I hear someone gallop towards the door and jerk it open with such force it is ripped from its hinges. It must have gotten jammed closed from the blast. I felt myself relax as I am gathered in someone's arms and rested against a strong chest. Thinking bitterly as I lose my conscious, I had told myself that they were _too strong_ to possibly be safe around.

I am in the doctor's ward when I come to. In a very uncomfortable bed, with too many snuggling sheets, puffy pillows. The mattress sinks as I shift around, I worry that I might be swallowed by it. I go suddenly quiet and idle when I catch a reflection of myself in the mirror across the room.

I shift around to check it is in fact me that I see. I untangle myself from the confiding net of sheets and walk up to my likeness; she is still corresponding with me, unsteadily crossing her own room. Without a sound I inspect what I am now, pulling down bandages that seem to cover ever part of me. I see that holes and punctures that the taut dressings had been concealing, but I don't believe.

I curl back on top of my sheets and watch the richest time for the sun, the last light of day, stream in and paint everything gold. I want to stay as I am now, alone and resting, still considered asleep and stolen by dreams. If anyone comes I will fake it, I seriously will.

All I want is the taste that only solitude can allow.

"My, my." I can hear people I knew another lifetime ago child. "What have you become?"

You've never seen people relish substance like this, the way they crouch together and cradle there drinks and powders. Wide eyes caught in there rushes, people ready to spend their last cent on their own selfish joys rather than for the baby that cries in the cot behind them.

It wasn't a bad life she had known, it was just challenging. A struggle to keep out of it, to have a sandwich and piece of fruit to bring to school every day, to always be pulled up by the drug dogs because her parent's cocaine stink was still stuck to her.

I sigh as the light grows and turns the ripples in the sheets into long shadowed moon craters. Outside I can hear the six pirates chiack about, helping the shipwright repair the damage done.

Please leave me alone for now.

"Get some wood your big guns!"

The sea closes as the light of the Sun sinks away. The stars rise like sparks from a fire; there are no other lamps or fires scaring them away so they are clear and bold. These are sober people; the captain takes up a sweet tune in an attempt to soften their tight faces. They would quit and sleep of their heavy hearts if the shipwright would let them. He's the most foolish and good-natured, yet working out under the light of tonight's obese moon he is raw and livid.

My ship…

…_Miss Linden_

They are all sorry, in the heat of the confrontation, not one of them though of her. Not even when it was over and won, not when congratulation were starting to be dished about. It took the captain, the most absent minded yet responsible (the irony burns) to clamber around the ship silently, ignoring his crews attempts at getting him to sit down and toast to the victory.

The laughter died in their throats when the odd man appeared again, this time with a pin cushioned, bleeding, clinging to life mess in his arms. How had you forgotten? How had I forgotten? How had they forgotten? This weak, untrained, civilian, fragile, inexpert, non-combatant girl, they had left her alone on a ship full of fighting, inhumanly strong pirates. It broke their newly opened hearts, when they watched the doctor unravel wall to wall lengths of bandage, (this is your fault), when they saw all the pieces that he had dug out of her, (this is your fault).

It shocked them like a breech birth when the captain proposed what was to happen. Grizzled and grimy, told him to sit down, told him to shut up.

"It's hard to accept, but it will be worst to see her like this again, to protect her, to even train her."

They told themselves that they won't let it happen again, but none of them are terribly sure. It would surely be horrible to see her like this again; would she even survive if it was to happen once more? Protecting her… this was the New World they were sailing, when you talked about fast, you didn't mean blurring, you meant disappearing; when you talked about weaknesses, you didn't mean gapes in defence or fear, you meant millisecond habits. And training… she had no potential, lean and undeveloped, scared and flighty at the very slowest move.

But his words held too much truth to simply dismiss. Maybe she had thought she was getting better at being brave, but the fact was that they were just getting better at not setting her off; she was as paranoid and broke now as before.

"Orright," they finally say, defeated.

They had to find Miss Linden a new home; one which was safe and quiet, organised and capable of caring for her well. The exact opposite of us, dangerous, loud, messy, chaotic, and in no way trained to rehabilitate her.

Taiko unlaced his old arm guards, worn thin from use by now and waddled off to the surgery. He had been planning to get a new pair at the next island, maybe metal instead of leather this time. Miss Linden was sitting up, her eyes bore into his, unnatural and lonely.

"I'm giving these to you, very commonly used; you need something to protect you when you go."

"Go?" Thick and uncertainly she spoke.

"You're not safe here; you need to go somewhere better." She just nodded, and accepted the guards from me. Taiko wasn't convinced that she had understood everything he had said, but she was. Helping her strap them on and fit them right, he was struck again at just how tiny and frail she was.

"While the rest mope, I…" He fatherly kissed her cheek, "take action."

8th day at sea:

Yesterday the Ox man gave me his arm guards; they are threadbare but not tattered, it's good that they had been worn so thin because now they wrap around my teeny forearms much more flexibly. _Well_, they are teeny when compared to Ox Man's arms, I like to boost to my reflection that I have gained over five kilos in the last week. I'm not being to be bony for long if I can help it.

I think the attack must have shaken them; they are so spooky and determined on something. From what I can understand, we will be at an island by tomorrow lunchtime.

9th day at sea:

We came to the island earlier than expected, I refused to leave the boat; towns petrify me. This one is loud and crowed, with tall buildings and grassy roads; it remains me of a festival. I had though they would let me stay behind, but they didn't seem to agree. I kick and scratched at them… and then the captain, well he… knocked me out.

I woke up in a jail cell, a marine jail cell. What a leap, pirate ship to marine jail. Maybe we got caught? _Maybe they handed me over? _Nah, impossible. I threw that thought away in the beginning, but as hours dragged themselves by, as the bars seemed to crawl closer and the people in the cells beside me grew more intimidating, I had to draw the conclusion that that was what had happened.

Because the only person that came was a marine to give me my dinner.

After a few days, a few distressing, claustrophobic days, I was moved to a more pleasant room and a person came and spent many hours every day with me, teaching me their language. It was something to take my mind away, because a parasite hatched in my stomach and was chewing me away. They abandoned me, I wasn't wanted, I'm alone again.

Life was a confusing vortex, again. I was wading aimlessly, again. I was holding a lamp over a drum of oil, trying to see the bottom; I was casting a net out in desperation, but always pulling in nothing but old socks and coke cans. I was losing all the wit and alertness I had gained with the pirates, the only thing that endeared me these days were the arm guards. Brown and leather, paling and wanning away, my centre.

The language teacher, grumpy and impatient, must have given me a test, because he was talking about me "passing" and "meeting the standard". An officer, talkative and the same height as me, took me to his side and together we slide out of the containment building and into the green streets. I started and balked at everything like a newborn foal, I had to me dragged through the sliding glass door and into the tiled foyer of some business.

Everything was quiet besides the receptionist pen strokes, the marine man left me sitting on a luxurious coach and went to talk with the lady. I listened in as his voice echo back to me,

"I'm here with the Marine referral girl."

"Excuse me?"

"Its business with Martin Camber, the girl behind me is finding employment through the Marines."

"What's your name?"

"Jan Goolsin."

" Mr Camber, officer Goolsin is here to see you." The Marine man comes back to her,

"Cheeky lady," he whispers to her. I just hum in agreement, I can understand words but the writing is still too complex for me. There are many posters and signs around, I would know what I'm for if I could just read. I decide to swallow my nerves and ask the man.

"What am I doing here?" He is a bit blank,

"To get interviewed for a job, of course."

"But I'm a convict, "

"No, we were just looking after you, like the pirates asked us too."

"The pirates?"

"The ones that carried you in, you know, On Air, Scratch man Apoo…" He played an imaginary flute as he named the crew and captain.

"I know them, they looked after me."

"Yeah, they are of the good sort." I nodded furiously,

"They are very, very good."

Marti Camber stalked into the foyer, and zeroed in on the Marine officer.

"What do you want? I was in the middle of a photo shoot you imprudent man. You see that my line of work is exhausting and I have no time for… this girl. I thought I told you marines that I did not except girls with eating disorders, it is simply not sexy these days and if… stand up women I want to get a better look, you have so many scars, they pepper every inch of you, my what a stretch mark, you have been putting on weight too fast, slow down! Do raise your arms, can you walk towards that pot plant, no, not like that! Try like this, and put a sway into those hips, and don't- wait, no, just keep doing that, yeah. Come with me for a bit, I need to see if you- marine man, she's hired, you can leave now!"

When he first saw her, she looked like just another slave to the skinny, but the closer he got, the more he was wrong. Oh, she did need to pack some meat onto those bones, but she was no "just another". The more time he spent in her company, the bigger a presence she grew. He simply had to inspect her closer, those scars unsettled him, but they didn't they hadn't disfigured her; they just added mystery, her eyes and features were so foreign and her hair was so… detailed. She didn't have a knack for the walk, but she shimmed up quicken then most. He had hurried her off, to see what she could flaunt in heels and some decent clothes. Not this ugly prison garb.

A model's job was not to be beautiful, it was to be captivating and by all the mermaids' scales did this girl memorise.

Terry wondered, as she posed and walked for the man, changing costumes every minute and lashing her hair as he instructed, she wondered if she wanted to go back. The marine man was leaning against a wall out of the way of the buzzing model agent, she kept glancing his way when the scarfed agent was overwhelming her and she was on the end of a break down. The marine would smile and that was enough, because her crew had entrusted him with her, she could trust him.

The warmth of the studio, the easing brush of the clothes, the happy ramblings of the man with the camera ("And this is without makeup!") the easing presence of the stranger all her unstable trust had flooded into, all made her feel sleepy and content. For although she didn't have a home to go to, she had a loving family sailed out there somewhere, she had a concerned career across the room, _she had never had those things in her other life_.

She was happy right now,

She wanted to stay.

The next time the One Air Pirates saw Miss Linden, it was on Fishman Island, she was nested amongst the lively high rises, staring out at them from a billboard, smouldering as she modelled a exclusive black dress.

They just stared, jaws on the ground.

"Cri-min: chic, crafty and worthy of the carnival_._"


	7. Greeting Bountiful

It's one thing to scream and curse and cry.

It's something completely different to just walk forward, steady in the knowledge that no matter what- you are indeed going forward. To the door, to the future, to something possibly greater still.

To be making a familiar tune out of the clinking of your shackles, to be looking forward to this next chapter, a jail life one. To have the thoughts of hope and delight as the jail cell comes closer, of how many future friends await? Will ever a goal be scored and everyone will cheer? How soon until folding sheets and gossiping like a house wife await?

To be so much more than regret, it's something completely different to this guard's eyes. But what's not different is her appearance; he has seen her type far, far too much.

The power blankets over and the guard goes under.

She moves and her skin shimmers in the blasting fluorescent lights. A scar is embedded in her calf; it looks like it slowly corrodes deeper into her skin every night.

It is high and deep, black and white, tight and loose; the guard wonders as she walks and he follows behind, is it a sign of her suffering, or that of every tribes person born from the desert huts to the city apartments?

They reach a meshed window, one that he always has dark thoughts when looking out of; there are no stars outside in the expansive, mystic African ceiling of night. The prisoner lady, the one who deservers so much more yet here he is locking her away, she jolts and doubles over like something is ripping into her gut. The she splits and bleeds and breaks away.

He was never a religious or superstitious man, but from that moment on, when the black children scream in their street game about a vengeful Tokoloshe, he ducks.

…

"_You may write me down in history_

_With your bitter, twisted lies,_

_You may trod me in the very dirt_

_But still, like dust, I'll rise._

…

He is working; hammering at the vast, meter tall pathways. Posts AJI- 800 to -850 are due to be replaced and some floor boards in section 7 splintered in the last king tide.

There is work and it needs to be done, it's not easy to do but you've got to do it, these are the war cries of his isolated, sand bar nation. No complaining, no grimacing, just finish your due and work your way through this harsh, infertile life of seaside existence. We all suffer, none more than most, we just have to shoulder the pain motionlessly together.

Working waste deep in salty, grimy water that is heated to nauseating point by the Sun, he yanks the rusty nails out with his hammer. There are no waves to body slam him down, the surface is flat enough to be mistaken for a marble dance floor. He reaches up where he left the rope, but he …can't…quite…reach …it.

A warm hand passes it to him, and the peppered grandfather looks up to see a smiling, blinding night god looking down at him from where she is up on the pathways. She mumbles an ancient god language to him; he takes the length of rope wordlessly as she peers down.

Wrapping it around the post and through the uniform slot he drilling in the post, he asks her why a mighty god likes herself as chosen to visit him. She does not reply and he takes it that he is not to address her and be so bold. Removing the nails from his rotten gums, he hands them up to her and sets them down on the planking by her bare and heat cracked feet.

He continues down the line until all fifty of the scheduled posts have had their nails removed and ropes put in. His job is cut in half and he gets time to sit and watch the art of the beach. He waits with the wordless night god until the tide recedes down to the yellow strips on the posts, the ones that mark where the water should be when pulling them up. She lowers herself into the water during this quite interval and proceeds to swim through the water like a shadow slipping over the rooftops.

Curling, diving, flipping, harassing the lone rock on the sea bed and attempting to chase schools of fish. She climbs out heaving and breathless but laughing with her eyes and loving life with her all.

…

_Does my sassiness upset you?_

_Why are you beset with gloom?_

_'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells_

_Pumping in my living room._

…

Once the job is done, the old posts are piled into the canoe. Untying the floating, thin boat from where it has been hitched like a horse, he gathers the oars and starts off with the precious cargo. Wood for children's toys or patching walls and awestruck night god who is enjoying the sensation of floating.

The fresh legs of the pathways are standing and new nails imbedded. He watches her play like not even children dare to do, the mentality of his people that fun and rest are sins burns at the back of his mind.

Is she here because she disobeyed and was banished from the sky? To watch now as the shire of their night, the mother of women and protector of pregnancies, to see her acting so different from the stone faced way she is described in the legends.

She pocks at the oysters that encrust the once-pillars-of-strength which have weathered Mother Ocean's suffocating love and the Sun's inescapable fury. The Sun… in the story of the Crab Betrayal, even though Lady Night tried to kill him, the Sun forgave her instantly.

The Sun loves Lady Night, which is why he chases her across the sky; the Sun would not let Lady Night be thrown out of the kingdom. They would not, would they? Haven't they been working together in synch to turn the earth since the beginning of time?

As he rows he tries to see the shape of her stomach, maybe she carries a child to someone other than her admiring Sun? Maybe that finally awoke the Sun to the hopeless pursuit of courtship? He jumps as Lady Night gasps. She has cracked an old oyster and smashed it open on the side of the boat; she scoops up something and shows in in delight and her god language. It's a pearl, bended into in the same crescent shape the moon was last night and as sparkling white as Lady Night's stars… it cannot be… but it makes sense…surly.

The man swings his oars and diverts his eyes as the goddess looks up to him, all of her is alive with finding the treasure, something which would be considered imperfect by many because it is not perfectly round. She rubs it and giggles into the afternoon breeze. There is a fire in this lady god, a burning intensity that makes you hurt when you walk away from her shinning, shimmering, forgiving, soothing, commanding presence.

A new tale emerges amongst the next generation, one of how Mother Ocean and Lady Night fell into love with each other, of how the rest could not stand the forbidden relationship of two women and cast Lady Night to the human world and now walks amongst them. Of how pearls are Mother Ocean's way of sending her eternal love to the Lady Night who suffers alone. Of how the Night is now ruled by an abandoned and empty household, of how the Sun went crazy with sorrow and continues to chase even through his Lady is gone.

She never realises the hollow eyed, strange, strange people in this new crazy, new, new place. She has found a utopia of excitement and colour. The seven ships in the harbour creak like her muscles when she stretches after a midday nap. Nobody stops her from climbing aboard, eager eyed to see the rest of this never-never land.

They set out, the sails billow, the wind reunites with her robust hair and she teaches herself how to flip and jump like an acrobat from the hanging ropes of the hard working ship. The men laugh at her and she shouts about "_give me food, chef man, me need meat!"_ in their language and "_you pathetic men, you stink like a fucking zoo!"_ in hers.

…

_Just like moons and like suns,_

_With the certainty of tides,_

_Just like hopes springing high,_

_Still I'll rise._

…


End file.
